Back to Argentina

I just finished a pretty weird monday. Anyways, my weekend was great, on Friday we went to Creamfields, where Chemical Brothers and Carl Cox did their thing. A friend gave me some VIP tickets, and for our luck, it had a full open bar, so we had a great time and of course the night end up quite crazy. On saturday I went to a BBQ where we had a great dinner, and after ir, we had a special guest, our old friend Jack Daniel.

Tomorrow I´m heading back again to Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is time I´m atttending Intel Editor´s Day which will be held in Rosario, Argentina. The event starts on Wednesday and our bus to Rosario departs very early, so we are leaving one day before.

I will have to go back to Buenos Aires on the end of this month, 29th and 30th, and if things go well, I should go in between this week and the 29th trip.  Because Chile is so small, many manufacturers decide to throw their press events at Buenos Aires, which is a bigger market, and fly journos there. It´s a good trick, an probably cheaper, although we´ve arrived late to more than one. That´s why it´s always better flying the day before.

PS: Slashdot only moved something around 2000 uniques to our site. Not too bad although less than we expected.

The start of a new life

I think I’ve just started the beginning of my real Internet Entrepreneur Adventure. On Saturday I moved in to a new apartment. The new apartment is quite cool, it’s very close to everything and my room mates are quite interesting. On one side there’s James and her girlfriend, they used to live in San Diego, CA and now they are working at their own bar in Santiago. On the other side, there’s Anikka and Patricia, Annika is German and she’s on an exchange program, Patricia on it’s side is working in a food related company and her family lives in Chicago, Il. This makes our flat quite busy, which is definitely fun.

On my personal side, I just freezed my studies. I will give all my attention to our Internet proyects, just like Shawn decided to do a long time ago. I really think we are in the right time, I’m not sure if I’m in the correct place, but time will tell.  I have lots of plans for the next 12 months, I’m looking forward for a big change that includes lifestyle and work. On the short term, I’m planning on studying Mandarin, and who knows, maybe even moving to Shanghai on the long term!

Business and Life Ramblings

This last week was quite busy. I spent sometime with a new potential editor for BotonTurbo and with Manuel. We just met for lunch and beers, and came out with the idea of a new internet proyect. We are still studying it´s potential, but I think we will start working on it soon. I´m really interested, because it´s nothing like we´ve done in the past.  I also finished my e-mail queue list and finished my short term to-do list. But what´s most important, I´ve been thinking. Thinking about me and our proyects, about the future and about a change in the way I live my life.  I´m moving on the next weeks and I will start a “new life”, and I have some ideas for it (health, eating, studying chinese, subway and not driving, handling with room mates, etc.).

The weekend was great. I met Cristobal, one of my best friends for wine and chat on Friday night, and on Saturday I met friends for a brilliant paella for lunch, and later a sushi dinner. I have to say my sushi skills are improving really fast and I´m even taking new “risks”, such as salmon nigiri and shrimp temaki.

This week will also be busy, we are still working on the new desing on TecnoSquad and I hope it finishes well. My personal goal is to have our whole network redesigned before new year´s eve. I still have to finish some writings (I hope tomorrow) and start writing our 2008 Media Kit. We are also building a showoff rig for MSI, which will be shown during the NVTrain (NVIDIA´s roadshow). But the best part of the week will be on Friday, when my new computer arrives, I will finally get rid of my old lappy =)

Working during night

Every geek in the world likes to work during the night, me too. Last week I did the same, but this time was studying, I studied from 10 PM to 7 AM, taked my tests till 1 PM, had lunch and after that I took a “nap” till 9 PM and then again the same thing. It worked, it definitely worked, but it´s not that healthy for your body, you know, we need some sun light. So after my test week, I decided to fix my sleep back again, so on Saturday I went to a friend´s girlfriend birthday and after that I slept Sunday all day. After waking up on Sunday at 9 PM I decided to fix my sleep, so I didn´t sleep till 8 PM on Monday and then woke up on Tuesday at 5:30 AM. From Tuesday I´ve been sleeping from 9 PM to 5 AM, which by the way is quite productive. I´ve been working on writing daily news and catching with my e-mails from 5 AM to 9-10 AM and then going to school, after school I finish my school day I come back to keep working.

Right now is 8 AM, I already finished my daily duties – writing for TecnoSquad and ChileHardware – and now I plan to have my third green tea cup, take a shower and rush to school. BTW TecnoSquad is doing great, we already reached 4k visits daily, I´ll update that as soon as June is over.

School should finish in three more weeks, I still need to take my final exams. After that I plan on taking vacations, we are still not sure if Peru will be the final destination, Buenos Aires is always a good choice.

Motherboard is in the house

The motherboard I will be using in my new setup has arrived. What´s not so cool is that the case I was looking for, is out of stock, the only one available has a window, and I don´t want to buy the one with the window for three reasons:

1) This is not a gaming computer, but more of a 24/7 personal computer, so I don´t need a window.

2) The parts that will have are no show-off

3) I don´t want to spend 20 bucks extra for the damn window

“Good” news is I don´t have time for building it till I finish this semester, which should be the 12th of July. Considering I plan to go out on vacations the 17th, I will use that week to buy the rest of the parts and build it.

Finally building my new setup

For a while I´ve had a thought in my head, I definitely need a new computer. My laptop is broke and I´m using my test rig as my personal computer, and that´s definitely not the idea. Now here is the deal, my studio is just a door from my room, what I´m planning is building a really small setup for my room, this will be my daily driver. My testing rig, will be left at the studio where I plan to do all the benching and reviews.

I will be building a small computer coupled with a pair of LCD screens. I have already all the parts ready, but I won´t use the Biostar motherboard I´ve been using in the past, I´ll use a microATX motherboard and install it in a small form factor case. ECS will supply me with a G33 based motherboard, that is their newest IGP motherboard they have. I don´t plan using the integrated graphics, so I´ll install a new videocard, that shouldn´t be much of a deal. On the case, I chose the Thermaltake LanBox Lite, as soon as the motherboard arrives (it should arrive this week) I´ll go buy it.

The only thing I still don´t know is what monitors I will buy. I know I want a pair of 19 inch screens, but still not sure if going widescreen or 4:3, I think 4:3 is the way to go on dual screen, what would you choose?

Blogging: New Strategy

I will be adopting a new strategy towards my blog, I´ll try to write during weekends and program posts to publish during the week. This is the only way I will be able to post periodically. In fact the post you are reading right now was written in Sunday afternoon.

I really enjoy blogging but the fact that I´m working in two worksites and studying at the same time doesn´t make things easy. I can´t swear that I will post everyday, but trust me I write as much as I can.

Office to go

I saw a post where John Chow showed his mobile office, this was a while ago, but after checking out Bob´s mobile office I decided to write this post I had pending.

When I´m the road I take only the necessary stuff, I like to travel light, is the only way to do it. The most important para is my portable computer, a rather old Asus 12,1″ inch Centrino system that is about to get retired. I also carry a Kensington Travel Adapter, which can make it too almost all electric outlets in the world, a pair of Sony headphones, a really portable battery charger and my cellphone. The other four cases, carry my presentation cards, travelling documents and spare credit card, USB flash drives and flash memory and finally some notebook accesories.

It finally rained

Santiago is one of the most poluted cities in the world. On the other hand and even thought we autumn is finishing, we didn´t have any rain, till last week. Rain cleans suspended particles and let´s us see our mountains (which by the way still don´t have snow). I took some pictures to celebrate this occation

All this pictures were taken from the second floor of my house, where I spend most of my time. As you can see I live in a very green area, this is because I´m very close to the mountains but I´m not that far, I´m just 20 minutes away from downtown.

The only one upset about the rain… doggy

Sick… again!

I´m sick… again! Autumn is finishing and it´s getting quite cold down here (28ºF/-2ºC). I catched a cold after after a weekend of parties and now I´m blogging from bed.

Good news is I don´t have much to study, so even though I lost some classes, I can catch up. My grades for the first tests did fine and the second round starts in 20 days, so if I had to pick a week to be sick, it would have picked this week.

Bad news is I won´t be able to go to Computex… but we are sending someone, I have to catch up at school and Computex starts in 10 days. The only problem with being sick, even if it´s in a “loose” week, is I didn´t have time to review some stuff I have around. So I´ll have to get well ASAP and keep track of some things.